by Dani Collins
“I see. Well, kindly convey that we would prefer fewer stunts in future. My team will handle—” he indicated her middle again “—this.”
She blinked, not expecting him to be worried for Izzy, not really, but his cool attention to his own interests sent a premonition down her spine like a drip of icy water.
It occurred to her that he had closed the door not because he wanted to nurture the growing trust between them. He wanted to have a conversation that was best held within the gilded cage he’d assigned her.
Logically she knew she had imprinted on her first lover like a baby duckling emerging from its protective shell. She’d spent weeks reliving Paris and imagining this reunion, dreaming up scenarios where he was as happy about her pregnancy as she was.
It was delusional. She had known that, but apparently she was still building castles in the sky because a minute ago, she had been okay with his knowing all her worst secrets. Now a grossly naked sensation accosted her, like he had leverage on her.
She tried to disguise her apprehension with a tough smile. “It’s time to discuss this. Isn’t it?”
The barest flicker of emotion reflected in his blink. He folded his arms and tilted his head in assent. “Gunter informs me your doctor has accepted my offer of a residency at Hospital del Re, with a mandate to ensure our obstetrics wing is the best in the world. She’ll be here tomorrow and has requested a private room be prepared for you.”
“Bed rest.” Trella had known it was coming, but still made a face of dismay.
“You’ll fight it?”
“No.” She wasn’t able to keep the dread from her voice, though. “It’s for the best.”
“It is.”
Something in his tone, in the subtle shift of his expression, pricked up her ears. Relief? His approval of her going into the hospital had nothing to do with the health of their unborn child. He was protecting his own interests again!
An ache of hurt spread through her until all her sweet imaginings had been pushed out and she was left with the ugly reality. She really had been deceiving herself all these months.
“Keeps me out of sight, does it? Is that the Queen’s preference? Or yours?” Behind the stir of their child, her abdomen tightened.
His expression grew even more shuttered. “It’s expedient for all. You said you don’t want the attention our association brings.”
“Don’t pretend you’re doing me a favor. Are we not marrying, then?” Clearly not, if he was hiding her away.
Her arms pulled into a defensive fold across her front. Her shoulders grew rock hard while she ignored the creep of anguish that began working in tendrils through her core. What did she care? She didn’t want a husband anyway!
Right?
“Of course we’ll marry.” He mirrored her posture, arms folded, seeming relaxed in the way he leaned on the footboard, but there was a stillness to him, an implacability in his tone. “Elazar had a bastard monarch in the 1700s. It was a bloody fight to keep the reign. We’ve been sticklers for legitimacy ever since.”
She understood she was speaking to a future king now, not the charming prince who had lulled her with something that had resembled caring. Twice.
“Our marriage will be a private ceremony. Announced, but without fanfare. No formal photos. We’ll keep it brief.”
“The ceremony? Or the marriage?”
“Both.”
The tendons in her neck flexed as she fought a choke, doing her best to hide how deeply he was striking against her hard-won self-worth. “How brief?”
“We’ll divorce by the end of the year.”
Her teeth closed on the inside of her lip, biting down harder and harder until she had to consciously remind herself not to break the skin.
What had she expected after showing him her true colors? A declaration of love? A desire to live out his life with that? Well, she knew exactly how much duty he felt toward her, didn’t she? Not even four months’ worth.
“That’s quite the virgin birth you’re orchestrating.”
His eyes narrowed at her shaken tone. “Is this conversation going to bring on another attack?”
Oh, she hated above all things to be managed like she was too delicate for honesty.
“I do better when I know what’s coming.” Her voice only trembled a little, mostly from the effort to hide the burn of disgrace sizzling under her skin. “Is this room a time machine, by the way? I feel we’ve gone back to your 1700s and I’m something shameful you’re sweeping under the rug.”
“It isn’t about hiding you.” He showed the barest hint of discomfort by dropping his hands to the footboard and pushing to stand. “I’m acknowledging you and the heir you’re providing me, but it would be helpful if your role was downplayed, so as not to overshadow Patrizia’s.”
“You’re still engaged?”
“It’s been called off, since I’m marrying you, but—”
“She’s still willing to marry you?” The news pushed her into falling back a step. Maybe it was the realization that he still wanted that marriage himself. Why did that hurt? So much?
“Unless a better offer comes along, she is not averse to reviving our plan after you and I divorce.” He must have read the incredulity in her expression, because he said, “We’re friends. Both ruled by duty. The fact we don’t have strong feelings for each other and she’s not hurt by this—” again with the generic wave at her middle “—is the reason we’re a good fit.”
“But her child won’t be first in line! Or is she hoping mine’s a girl?”
“Gender isn’t an issue in Elazar. First born is first in line, but...” He seemed to debate whether she could handle his next words before he said, without emotion, “Until you deliver a healthy baby, many aspects of this situation remain fluid.”
Trella sucked in a gasp so sharp it went down the back of her throat like a spear, sticking in her heart and pinning her motionless. She tried telling herself the shivery clamp around her was anger, but it was anguish. Dark, blood-red betrayal.
“How dare you give someone hope that I’ll lose our baby.”
“It’s not hope.” He strode away from the foot of the bed in a sudden rush, making her jerk back another step and keep him in her line of sight. “It’s caution. You said this will be your only pregnancy. There is a reason for an heir and a spare. If my uncle had lived, this conversation wouldn’t even be happening. If my mother had done her duty, I would have other choices. I don’t. I will accept what comes of this pregnancy, but I have to ensure there are alternatives.”
She was so appalled that she wasn’t even sure what the cold feeling against her lips was. Her fingers? All of her felt cold and empty and deeply furious.
She barely tracked that his hand flicked the air. Through her own haze of emotion, she had a brief impression of bitterness before he turned his back on her.
Anything close to suffering on his part was imagined, though. Had to be. Everything she had shared with this man was imagination and faulty memory. A wish. Girlish daydreaming. A rescue fantasy.
He was a spoiled prince who had sullied a maiden and was tidying up that mess the most pragmatic way possible.
“This really is medieval times, isn’t it? Women have come all this way, yet I’m still just a vessel. A faulty one.” She knew she was broken. It shouldn’t surprise her that she was being rejected. She had thought she had prepared herself, but she hadn’t. She was gutted and had to fight with everything in her not to reveal how devastated she was.
So many times, she’d wished she could go back to that moment as an impetuous girl, when Gili’s math tutor had called out to her. She had run to tell him he had the wrong twin, that’s all. It had been one second of impulse and she was still being punished for it.
Xavier’s head tipped back as he aimed his gaze at t
he portrait of an ancestor surveying them from high on the wall.
“If I don’t produce our next ruler, the crown passes to a family living in America for the last two hundred years. Rather than let that happen, our neighbors would squabble to take control of Elazar. Instability would ripple across Europe. The globe. We’re a small country, but a pivotal one. I need more than one child to ensure Elazar’s future. I need a wife with connections that cement our alliances.”
His voice held not one iota of regret or even concern for how his plan would affect this child. Or her.
“Spell it out for me.” She grappled for her most pragmatic tone. “Exactly how is this to work? Because I am not allowing some strange woman to raise my baby.”
“Our child will be raised by nannies, tutors and servants, same as you and I.”
“I wasn’t!”
“You left for boarding school at seven. If you hadn’t been kidnapped, you would have grown up there. Your brothers did.”
“My parents traveled, but they were very involved. We knew they loved us!”
As she stared into his half-lidded eyes and read indifference, it struck her why he was being so dispassionate rather than weighing his decisions through his heart.
“You don’t know what that’s like, do you?” She felt cruel saying it, but everything he had told her about his parents came back to her, bringing his brutally logical plan into focus.
His brow went up in arrogant query. “What?”
“Love.”
He might have flinched, but it was gone so fast that she wasn’t sure. His sigh was pure condescension as he pushed his hands into his pockets. “I told you last night—”
“I’m not talking about romantic love. Family love.”
“Love of any kind isn’t real.” His voice slapped her down for being so gullible. “Look around. Is it here? Keeping anyone in my life but my grandmother? Loyalty. Obligation. Duty. Those are real.”
She would have argued that her family loved her, but something else struck with brutal force. “Are you saying—”
She had a flash of her mother crying with joy because Trella was pregnant. Elisa Sauveterre was worried sick and had strong opinions on how Trella had avoided telling Xavier, but beneath all of that was pure, over-the-moon love for her unborn grandchild.
“Is your grandmother happy we’re having a baby?” Her voice quavered with strain.
His jaw set. “That is not the word I would use, no.”
“Wow.” A jagged laugh clawed inside her chest. “Just wow.” How did one survive such an emotional desert?
The answer was before her. They turned into this—an image of a man with a heart, but one who was actually incapable of deeper feelings. One who scoffed at love.
A fierce gleam—torment?—flashed in his gaze before he steeled himself behind a visage of hammered armor. “But she recognizes we have a responsibility toward it.”
“Precious obligation,” she said shakily. “Here’s some news for you. I will not be shut out of my child’s life and replaced by nannies and tutors. I’ll call in the rescue team right now and barricade us in Sus Brazos for the rest of our lives if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Dramatics will not be necessary,” he said with pithy disdain. “We’ll share custody, fifty-fifty. Aside from security and education, how you meet the needs of our child is your business. Visitations to Spain or elsewhere can be worked out as they arise. But our child lives in Elazar.” He pointed at the floor. “I will provide you with a home here in Lirona as part of our divorce settlement.”
She shouldn’t care how quickly he got rid of her. He was being so cold, acting so far removed from the man she had wanted to believe he was, she could hardly endure facing the next minute in his company let alone four months of marriage.
It still took effort to say, “Well, that’s a relief.” She held his gaze, saying goodbye to those moments when he had held her and touched her as if there had been more between them than obligation. “I can move on then, too.”
His eyes narrowed with warning, gaze so hard and devoid of feeling she struggled to hold the contact. “You can.”
How foolish of her to try getting under his skin. She looked away, thinking that she couldn’t stay this close to him with her defenses annihilated the way they were.
“Where is this dowager wing of which you spoke?”
“You’ll sleep where I can keep an eye on you. You were difficult enough to track down as it was.”
“Confinement. How apropos. And familiar.”
“I won’t apologize. We’ve agreed it’s wasted.”
“I still won’t forgive you.”
“Because I’m not upending my life?”
“Because you don’t want our baby!”
“I don’t want our situation.”
You don’t want me! She didn’t say it. She was appalled she had thought it and turned her face away, boiling in humiliation. Pressure filled her throat and sat livid behind her eyes.
Into the thick silence, he sighed. “What I want has never mattered, bella. Duty to the crown takes precedence. I learned that a long time ago.”
His voice was surprisingly gentle, which made the lash of the words all the more cutting and intolerable.
“Don’t call me that. It’s a family nickname and implies we’re closer than we are, but it’s just something you say when you can’t remember the name of the woman you’re sleeping with.”
Another loaded silence filled the room like an acrid cloud.
“Explain to me how sniping at each other will make this easier.”
“It’s the truth.” She swallowed past the ache in her throat, but it only lodged deeper in her chest. “You called me that in Paris and it made me think you saw me, not my sister, but all you saw was a willing partner. I need to stop thinking we’re friends. Stop acting like we are.”
They were still strangers and would remain so. He kept his heart behind thicker walls than she had ever hidden behind.
“If you insist. Trella.”
“Thank you.” She wasn’t grateful. She was shattered. “Can you—” She waved at the door. “I’m tired.”
“Will you be all right alone?”
She had thought he couldn’t hurt her any further, but that did it. After rejecting her so roundly, did he really think she would want to cling to him through another emotional storm? How did he manage to sound like he cared if she suffered alone?
“I have to learn to be, don’t I? I’ve known that for a long time. Goodnight.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
I NEED TO stop thinking we’re friends.
There was no reason he should have lost sleep over that. Perhaps the bella endearment had always rolled off his tongue very easily around women, but for some reason knowing it held a more intimate connotation for her made it something he wanted the right to use. He doubted he would ever use it again with anyone else. It was hers now, which made it doubly frustrating she refused to hear it from him.
He went into his first meeting of the day, unrested and gritty eyed, only to face the woman still torturing him. They were about to negotiate their prenuptial agreement.
He introduced her to the palace attorney who fell under her spell at the first flash of her smile. She wore a pin-striped sky blue jacket over a white shirt that draped untucked over her matching skirt. It made her look smart and capable, yet sensual. Achingly vulnerable.
“I should have invited your brother to stay for this,” he said as he directed her into a comfortable armchair.
“Why?” She cooled when he touched her arm and delicately removed her elbow from his loose touch, adjusting a cushion behind her back as she sat.
“To protect your interests.”
“You can email the draft to him
,” the attorney said with a magnanimous smile. “If he has concerns, we can address them before you sign.”
She sat back and folded her hands on her lap, smiling in a way that could only be called patronizing.
“Gentlemen. Along with our mother, my siblings and I jointly own Sauveterre International. Ramon votes Gili’s share and Henri votes Mama’s because they don’t take an interest. I vote my own, thank you very much. Maison Des Jumeaux is not the only enterprise I’ve asked SI to underwrite. One hundred percent of my initiatives have turned a profit because I have a brain and use it. So...” She cut a glance toward Xavier. “The Prince may show the draft to his grandmother before he signs, to ensure his interests are protected, but I’m confident I can look after my own.”
The attorney cleared his throat and shuffled papers.
Xavier held her lofty stare.
He should have been affronted. It was a well-executed burn in front of the attorney and his PA, but he was darkly thankful for that scorn in her.
He had watched her all through their meal with her brother yesterday, captivated by her rallying spirit. The glimpse of her family dynamic and the new facets in her personality had only made him want to know her far better than he would be allowed to. It had taken genuine effort on his part to stick to the plan and outline how they would proceed. If he had had a choice—
He didn’t. So he had said what needed to be said.
She’d been angry. Injured. She was sentimental. And despite his claims to be anything but, he didn’t take pleasure in hurting others. If things were different...
Wistfulness was a useless emotion. He steeled himself against futile if onlys. “Let’s get started.”